Matthew BassingtonIn what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media project is very mainstream in its bases for its audience Idecided to make a Teen comedy and specificity tried to stay as close to its broad range of conventions as closely as I could I borrowed concepts from Teen movie's such as American Pie and Napoleon Dynamite basing my storyline and message within the film about the lunch room scenario and a Teen finding their place in the world as well as socially which is just about the plot for most Teen movie's over the past 30 years.Mise-en-sceneI used postick notes as a method of naturally embedding the titles for the title sequence into the movie to one make it more natural but at the same time to add to the conventions of the typical Teen movie character and movie in general. Because the postick notes look almost lazy in nature it reflects one of the many stereotypes based around Teens. For the mise-en-sen affect I used posters from popular gaming franchises that are well known to connote the specific stereotype of the Nerd in order to help generate the way the audience identity's and categorise the character without having to necessarily go into the characters back story I took this concept from most TV shows and programmes and decided that for a comedy where stereotypes play such a vital role in the establishing the characters and the characters are what drive the entertainment aspects as a result mise-en-scene was a big focus of ours. We brought with us spot cleaning products for the added affect of a typical spotty Teenager which could add to the audiences ability to relate and keeps it very much grounded in the real world by having products that people actually use in day to day life.We paid very close attention to the appearance of the character as only one character is featured in the title sequence we felt that it was crucial that the audience could easily identify them as a result we chose for the character to wear classes as this is a stereotype of the Nerd and is used in the majority of Teen movie's it also connotes him as being intelligent which would have helped with the plot later on in the film withthe concoction which would allow him to become cool. As I played the character I wore a star wars T Shirt which had a homework based slogan one because star wars can be seen as the pinnacle of stereotypical nerd culture and its a reference the vast majority of people would instantly recognise the homework reference also helps with the whole stereotypical concept of Teens hating school and its work especially when its home related.I wore converses because they are trendy currently and makes the character more relateble as we didn't want to over saturate the character with stereotypes to the point the character can't be believed to be a real person or have basic human traits that break away from all ofthe stereotypes put into it. The setting for the housewas quite lazy the house was fairly bland and quite generic again connoting the laid back feeling towards the film and the characters attitude towards life in general. We used rubbish like crisp packets and sweet packets to create the idea of him being very lazy and messy as well as slobbish as it reflects the Teen stereotype and its conventions very well.Camera ShotsIn typical Teen comedy you get a set of very strict archetypes groups that establish whether or not you have a high or low status for a character for instance Jocks who are seen as popular and athletic would be seen as high status while the Nerd character who is intelligent but very much the loner would be seen as low status quite often the two will clash and the Jock will be used to establish who has a higher power and in some Teen Comedies the Nerd will eventually prove to be juxtaposition to that idea and eventually have more power than the Jock which can be distilled down into the basic Good VS Evil concept with a hero a villain and a damsel in distress usually.A specific example of this would be the shot of me falling over the camera angle faces down as well as the shots of me in bed I am seen from a high angle connoting a lower status and the shot of a bed also helps with the connotations of laziness that is associated with the stereotypical Teen.The editingWe used a voice over in the post productionstages taking inspiration fromgeneral comedy conventions Peep Show in particular with the idea of thought talking and in head monologuing that the audience can hear this kept the intro more intresting with dialogue instead of just a series of shots of getting ready in the morning. The pace was generally quite quick with a bounce to its step due to the rhytem of the music playing a big part in the feel of the movie and it general feel good vibe.We bumped up the saturation and brightness to connote that it was light hearted and bright as it connotes that the film will be much more of a feel good film.The SoundThe music was very happy and added a lot to the comedy it was quite genreic for lower budget films because larger budget films can liscense popular artists we had to get our music for free from audioautix.com. We had a very cheesy scratched records affect that was very conventional for sort of old time taking the micky films much more from the earlier genration of Teen comedy than the modern version.OtherA way we broke from the conventions was the fact that all of the Teen comedes we looked at were American and as a result a lot of the culture refrences were American and while most people know the stereotypes and the jist of American Teen culture we were forced to adjustthat because obviously we arent in America and so we made an English equivlant as we couldnt use say the iconic yellow school bus to add to the Teen conventions instead we filmed a scene of a bus stop and a few other signs that implied it was Uk based not to mention the choice of language we used in the script and the name of the character Charlie Adams which is very English name and as a result broke from the typical Hollywood stereotypical Teen comedy and went in a new direction with it using other conventions from comedy and Teen comedy to serve as a framework for our piece.